Praying for a year minus Jesus H Christ
Very keen for this to be the year when those who fancy themselves as the natural heirs to the moral majority realise that they're actually the moral minority. Falwell is dead, you nitwits...
But let's not be childish for an entire post for once... on Wednesday 16 January 2008, we of the pro-choice majority will be attending a public meeting at the Houses of Parliament where the campaign to continue defend the Abortion Act and a woman's right to decide will continue at pace.
Pro-choicers like ourselves are extremely concerned that anti-abortionists (or, perhaps we should say, politicians looking to cash in on voters' purported fervour for legislation with a nice righteous/misogynist twist) are using the government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to restrict the Abortion Act.
Baroness Masham has tabled an amendment to restrict abortion. Other MPs may try to lower the legal abortion time limit, as Nadine Dorries has tried on several occasions (and failed and failed again, btw, but, you know - never say die).
And here is the charming Baroness Paisley spritzing the masses with exactly the sort of berserk blast that puts the topic so completely beyond any place where rational intercourse might live:
"...Northern Ireland will not be bullied by political activists whose ideas and actions have brought about the massacre of more than seven million innocent unborn children in the years that this (Abortion) Act has been in operation on the mainland...
"It is difficult to comprehend the enormity of this murder campaign, and how many scientists, musicians, doctors, teachers and business men and women have been flushed down the sluices of our hospitals and clinics... We hear complaints about the brain drain, but it never seems to be recognised that the surgeons who advise women and carry out their wishes are the people who drain the brains, together with the lifeblood, dismembered limbs and bodies and crushed skulls of their silent victims...
"I wonder whether the women who abort their children and those who carry out the gruesome execution of these innocent and defenceless living babies ever think that they are emulating Herod in the horrific campaign that he perpetrated on innocent victims in his day. It is heartbreaking to think that any man or woman who has sworn to preserve life is instead wilfully and systematically doing what only God Himself has the authority to do—sons and daughters of Herod indeed..."
God help us. No mention from B Paisley, needless to say, of the devastating consequences of being forced to give birth to a baby that you have no means of supporting in an era where women are paid less than men, and continue to top poverty tables, etc, etc. No mention of proposals to stem the corporate tide in an era where women are paid less and less as employers return more and more to shareholders... Don't get me started.
Speakers at the 16 January meeting include Baroness Joyce Gould, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Emily Thornberry MP, Katy Clark MP, Diane Abbott MP, Frances O'Grady, Deputy General Secretary TUC, Anni Marjoram, adviser to the Mayor of London, Alex Kemp, NUS Disabled Students' Campaign, Katherine Rake, Director Fawcett Society, Wendy Savage, Doctors for A Woman's Right to Choose on Abortion and Anne Quesney, Director Abortion Rights.
More at abortion rights.
